S.C. Declines to Review Ruling on Harassment Suit Against
Charter School

By a MetNews Staff
Writer

The California Supreme
Court yesterday declined to review a ruling that a charter school, which is
being sued for sexual harassment, is not a public entity for purposes of the
Government Tort Claims Act.

None of the court’s
seven justices, meeting in San Francisco for their weekly conference, voted to
grant Palisades Charter High School’s petition for review of a Jan. 10 ruling
allowing Courtney Knapp to sue the school.

Knapp’s lawyer, Edwin
Carney, told the MetNews yesterday that it was “about time” the parties “moved
on with the real issues in the case.”

The Court of Appeal
ruling, by this district’s Div. Seven, was a turnaround from a vacated ruling
that the act applied, barring Knapp from suing because she did not file a
timely claim.

In the new ruling, the
panel reversed Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Joe W. Hilberman’s order
granting summary judgment to the school, which exists pursuant to a June 2000
charter from the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Applying the recent
California Supreme Court case of Wells v. One2One Learning Foundation (2006) 39
Cal.4th 1164—which was decided just before the rehearing of Knapp’s appeal—the
justices held that PCHS was not a public entity because it operates
independently of LAUSD.

In Wells, the
high court held that various charter schools being sued by distance learning
students did not qualify as “public entities” because they were not operated by
the public school system. The schools’ only relationship with the
chartering districts was through the charters, the court noted, and they acted
autonomously in regard to their finances, legal matters and management.

Justice Laurie D. Zelon,
writing for Div. Seven, reasoned that PCHS is similarly independent of its
chartering authority. As an alleged nonprofit public benefit corporation, she
said, it is a separate legal entity that has its own board of directors and
authorized agent for service of process, operates on its own budget, and hires
its own administrators and teachers.

“It is likewise given
substantial freedom to achieve academic results free of interference by the
LAUSD, whose chartering authority comprises the sole relationship with PCHS,”
she wrote, noting that its charter requires it to carry its own insurance and
bond, hold the LAUSD harmless from claims arising from the school, and take
full responsibility for its own financial services.

Zelon added that PCHS is
not a “public agency” required to register with the secretary of state and the
county clerk for the Roster of Public Agencies.

In its earlier opinion,
the court had not focused on the question of whether PCHS was a public entity,
but on whether the LAUSD or the county was the proper entity with which Knapp
was required to file her claim under the act before suing PCHS.

San Diego-based attorney
Greg Moser, who filed an amicus brief for the California Charter Schools
Association and California Charter School Association Joint Powers Authority in
support of PCHS’s Supreme Court petition, said the high court’s action
yesterday “means that charter schools will probably take a harder line in terms
of saying that a number of public agency laws do not apply to them.”

“If they’re going to be
treated like private entities for liability purposes then they’re going to
behave more like private organizations and less like governmental organizations,”
he remarked, noting that any change in the “legal environment” would not affect
day-to-day classroom operations.

Knapp sued PCHS in June
2004 alleging that history teacher Ronald Cummings, now semi-retired, used
sexual innuendo and profanity to embarrass her while she was an eighth-grader
visiting the school.

She claimed that while
she accompanied a student to Cummings’ class during an event called “Shadow
Day,” where prospective enrollees were given the opportunity to follow a PCHS
student to classes, Cummings made a comment to the class about her breasts and
otherwise made her feel uncomfortable with sexual banter.

Knapp’s father had
notified PCHS of his daughter’s allegations and demanded that it either fire
Cummings or pay $125,000 to cover four years of tuition at Oaks Christian
School, which Knapp chose over PCHS allegedly due to her traumatic
experience.